History of the United Netherlands, 1598-99 | Page 3

man of letters, a scientific and

professional traveller. But it was obvious when he returned, rich with
the spoils of oriental study during thirteen years of life, that the results
of his researches were worthy of a wider circulation than that which he
had originally contemplated. His work was given to the public in the
year 1596, and was studied with avidity not only by men of science but
by merchants and seafarers. He also added to the record of his Indian
experiences a practical manual for navigators. He described the course
of the voyage from Lisbon to the East, the currents, the trade-winds and
monsoons, the harbours, the islands, the shoals, the sunken rocks and
dangerous quicksands, and he accompanied his work with various maps
and charts, both general and special, of land and water, rarely
delineated before his day, as well as by various astronomical and
mathematical calculations. Already a countryman of his own,
Wagenaar of Zeeland, had laid the mariners of the world under special
obligation by a manual which came into such universal use that for
centuries afterwards the sailors of England and of other countries called
their indispensable 'vade-mecum' a Wagenaar. But in that text- book
but little information was afforded to eastern voyagers, because, before
the enterprise of Linschoten, little was known of the Orient except to
the Portuguese and Spaniards, by whom nothing was communicated.
The work of Linschoten was a source of wealth, both from the
scientific treasures which it diffused among an active and intelligent
people, and the impulse which it gave to that direct trade between the
Netherlands and the East which had been so long deferred, and which
now came to relieve the commerce of the republic, and therefore the
republic itself, from the danger of positive annihilation.
It is not necessary for my purpose to describe in detail the series of
voyages by way of the Cape of Good Hope which, beginning with the
adventures of the brothers Houtmann at this period, and with the
circumnavigation of the world by Olivier van Noord, made the Dutch
for a long time the leading Christian nation in those golden regions, and
which carried the United Netherlands to the highest point of prosperity
and power. The Spanish monopoly of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean
was effectually disposed of, but the road was not a new road, nor did
any striking discoveries at this immediate epoch illustrate the enterprise
of Holland in the East. In the age just opening the homely names most
dear to the young republic were to be inscribed on capes, islands, and

promontories, seas, bays, and continents. There was soon to be a
"Staten Island" both in the frozen circles of the northern and of the
southern pole, as well as in that favoured region where now the mighty
current of a worldwide commerce flows through the gates of that great
metropolis of the western world, once called New Amsterdam. Those
well-beloved words, Orange and Nassau, Maurice and William,
intermingled with the names of many an ancient town and village, or
with the simple patronymics of hardy navigators or honoured statesmen,
were to make the vernacular of the new commonwealth a familiar
sound in the remotest corners of the earth; while a fifth continent,
discovered by the enterprise of Hollanders, was soon to be fitly
baptized with the name of the fatherland. Posterity has been neither just
nor grateful, and those early names which Dutch genius and enterprise
wrote upon so many prominent points of the earth's surface, then seen
for the first time by European eyes, are no longer known.
The impulse given to the foreign trade of the Netherlands by the
publication of Linschoten's work was destined to be a lasting one.
Meantime this most indefatigable and enterprising voyager--one of
those men who had done nothing in his own estimation so long as
aught remained to do--was deeply pondering the possibility of a shorter
road to the opulent kingdoms of Cathay and of China than the one
which the genius of De Gama had opened to his sovereigns. Geography
as a science was manifesting the highest activity at that period, but was
still in a rudimentary state. To the Hollanders especially much of the
progress already made by it was owing. The maps of the world by
Mercator of Leyden, published on a large scale, together with many
astronomical and geographical charts, delineations of exploration, and
other scientific works, at the magnificent printing establishment of
William Blaeuw, in Amsterdam, the friend and pupil of Tycho Brahe,
and the first in that line of typographers who made the name famous,
constituted an epoch in cosmography. Another ardent student of
geography lived in Amsterdam, Peter Plancius by name, a Calvinist
preacher, and one of the most zealous and intolerant